inner time
by jarofclay42
Summary: [TYL!80 59 27, very slight 8059] In which time stretches, blood trickles and death likes staying beside Gokudera.


**So, this is the first time I translate one of my old fics, aaand I SUFFERED SO MUCH, but thanks to Hikagi (here on FFnet), my beta, I managed to get it done so THANK YOU Hikagi, your betaing was perfect and if this sucks, it's my fault.**

**As usual, I put the Yama/Goku pairing because in my head they are together here. OTPs are always together in everything I write even when it doesn't seem so. Yes.**

**I hope you enjoy this even if it's kind of horribly sad. I hate death fics. I made an oath to never write death fics. And I love how coherent I am with myself.**

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( □ **Stop** ‹‹ **Rewind**

**That blood was never there.** )

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_Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. Dri_—Stop.

Silence.

Eight fifty-nine and ten seconds.

The umpteenth '_drip_'—**Stop**. Rewind.

( That drop never fell. )

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The drop is cold. It leaves a chilly path along the back of his hand, it falls and it stains the white shirt—red. That shirt is familiar; it's the one with the loose third button and the creased collar. It has always been white and now, it's another matching element in a ruined red painting.

'_Drip_', another drop makes, the fine dust and the ashes tireless as they furiously whirl in a singular, disharmonious dance in the air enlightened by the pale sunrays. They say it's always darkest before the dawn, but to Gokudera, the world has never been darker than it is that morning.

The small windows are shattered, the floor is an ocean of concrete rocks and deceptive glimmers, fake shining scales of sharp glass fishes. The walls are decorative; they barely hold up as they play along with the seconds and they tremble from the puffs of steam coming from the destroyed boilers.

His legs are numb, his knees tingle vehemently and his hands are warm – so warm; the dark flow slips between the fingers easily despite the pressure, and keeps them so warm.

The sheared pipe over them groans threateningly; it wants to crumble down, it's tired of being barely hung over the void almost as much as Gokudera is, but time keeps it there. It would have already fallen if time hadn't frozen. The water keeps on raining in tiny sparkling tears and exactly as he knows he can't halt the incessant dripping, he knows he can't stop the blood. It pours, and it drenches his fingers, his precious rings, the floor, the shards – the world paints itself crimson. Slowly, relentlessly, red banishes every other color around him like a plague, devastating and unmerciful.

A drop falls, '_drip_', and another trickle of blood rolls down and spreads on the floor.

Eight fifty-nine and twenty seconds and Yamamoto opens his eyes.

_Drip_—**Stop**. Rewind.

( That ceiling never collapsed. )

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"Haha," Yamamoto says, but that broken wheeze instantly falls back down his throat in a gurgle. He looks at him apologetically.

"I would have never thought it would end like this."

That's because Yamamoto is stupid; he acts as if his existence is just a game and he refuses to think about how it could end, how it will end without fail for _all of them_.

Gokudera, on the other hand, has thought about it—he's always had. He thinks about it every morning as he puts the gun in its holster; every afternoon when he fixes with affected impatience the other's necktie, purposely loosened and out of place; every evening when he glances at the old baseball bat resting inside a wardrobe, gathering a new layer of dust each year.

Or maybe Yamamoto is referring to dying from a bomb and not a caliber 22 bullet. Maybe he would have preferred the bullet.

Gokudera has always believed it is a meaningful difference, be it his death or others'. He often fantasizes about his own death. Death accompanies him wherever he goes – an old, gentle lady asking for support and silently hooking arms with him, looking anxious to take him where she wants, to lead his steps. It whispers dreams made of glory in the curve of his ear: sacrificing himself to save the Tenth; making himself explode on the battlefield and bringing down every enemy to hell with him; being remembered for having fought to his death in order to defend his Family. These have once been his brightest ambitions, his best friends who cradled him in their embrace throughout the hopeless nights.

But now—now he realizes it doesn't really matter how someone dies if you're the one who's left behind. A death is a death, and this death has a single choice as cause, so far away in time that it seems to belong to another life.

"It won't end here," he lies, ignoring the metal pole stuck in the middle of Yamamoto's chest.

The blood slides in the tiles' grooves, irrigates the cemetery of debris where puffs of smoke sprout up like impalpable flowers.

Only now the echoes of the bomb cease to shake the walls. The silence is now deafening, so intense that Gokudera's ears throb and itch unbearably as the void presses against his eardrums. He wants to scream, but he doesn't. He's not even sure if he is capable of making any noise.

Eight fifty-nine and forty seconds and Yamamoto tells him, "Liar."

_Drip_—**Stop**. Rewind.

( That bomb never exploded. )

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He watches a flake of plaster break away from the wall; it seems to take centuries to flutter down to the floor and drown in the thin layer of water.

"I'm happy you're here."

Gokudera is not. He'd rather not be here to live these endless minutes staring at Yamamoto's skin as it becomes more and more cadaveric, his amber eyes duller. He wishes Yamamoto isn't here, either. Yamamoto should _never_ have been here like _this_. And yet, they both are, and the air gets increasingly suffocating, the creaking more menacing but Gokudera is not going to go away. His knees are stuck to the floor and they're red, like everything else.

"Don't cry," Yamamoto says, and when he does, for a moment, his hazel eyes water and his face scrunches up in a violent grimace of pain. For a moment, Yamomoto seems to fully realize his hour has come, that his life is slipping away from his chest along with his blood, that it's just a matter of seconds by now. Gokudera has never seen such a resigned look and almost can't bear that expression of panic; he _almost_ looks away. Yet, he doesn't, and in Yamamoto he reads the silent prayer, '_please don't make it more real. This is a game, this is just a dream_.'

And it comes easy to Gokudera to pretend to be in a dream, because only in dreams things, people, colors, time make so little sense as they do now.

"I'm not crying," he answers, and he speaks with such firmness that the words sound true. And Yamamoto smiles again – a sad smile – that is meant to be encouraging. Instead, it crushes Gokudera's heart under an iron anvil. He's trying to console _him_, the idiot. He's not the one who's about to die. Maybe that's a pity.

"Okay," Yamamoto murmurs. Then he closes his eyes, and a tear trickles from under his eyelid along the temple.

He stays silent for so long that Gokudera fears for the worst. He grabs the cold hand of the other and feels for a pulse. Faint, everything about him is so faint.

'_This is not a dream, isn't it,_' Gokudera thinks, and trembles with anger. He wants to shake him by the shoulders, slap him, make him open his eyes by screaming in his face. Yamamoto is not going to die before him, not so easily. He's going to bother him so much Gokudera will wake him up completely, not giving him a break nor allowing him to slip away, not _now_, not today.

But Yamamoto looks like he could shatter at the lightest touch, and it's absurd to admit that he's the same Yamamoto Gokudera has known for a lifetime.

And at that point, reality pushes against his brain. It's obvious that Yamamoto is going to die in front of him, and Gokudera can't do fucking anything to avoid it.

He feels like he has to say something. And he does have so many things to say, things he's never said and things he's said too few times, and there is little time to fix the lacking and mistakes of a whole life. Yet, his mind is completely empty. "Don't die," he only enjoins him instead but the illogical order comes out of his dry lips sounding more like a desperate prayer even to his ears.

Yamamoto struggles to reopen his eyes, and he laughs. It's a horrible laugh. '_If death could laugh,_' Gokudera thinks, '_it would sound just like that_'. And when he finishes, Yamamoto looks right in his eyes. "Thank you," he whispers slowly, ignoring his order. "For everything, Hayato."

Gokudera wants to punch him. Because Yamamoto seems to always know what to say and when to say it and because this is the cruelest thing Yamamoto could say. He tightens his hold on the icy hand in his, both dirty with blood. "You're an idiot."

Yamamoto shuts his eyes and attempts another laugh. This time, it sounds cleaner. "I know."

Nine o'clock and Yamamoto dies with a smile on his lips.

Something inside Gokudera dies with him.

_Drip_—**Stop**.

Fast forward.

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The years pass. On a rainy Tuesday during the spring, Gokudera gets shot through the heart by a caliber 22 bullet as he jumps in front of Tsuna to shield him from a sudden ambush.

Gokudera would be proud of a death like this, Tsuna thinks, but to he who gets left behind, a death is a death, and Gokudera's death has a single person as cause.

And the seconds Gokudera's body takes to reach the floor are the longest seconds of Tsuna's life—so long, he feels like time is going backwards.


End file.
